Presently, tremendous growth of satellite broadcasting industry has provided its consumers a wide range of multimedia contents for their viewing. With the current offerings of some satellite broadcasters and service providers, it is not uncommon for a household to have access to more than 200 multimedia channels. With such an entertainment bonanza at stake, it is no surprise that people try to access the multimedia contents and satellite signals in an unauthorized manner.
Generally, the signals from the service provider are transmitted or broadcasted to all consumers in an encrypted format or a scrambled format, and only those consumers who have the proper facilities and access codes can decrypt or descramble the received signals. Further, these access codes are currently stored in access cards or smartcards that must be inserted into an information appliance device, such as Set-Top Box (STB), used by the consumers. Even though the present day smart cards are secure enough, they are still vulnerable to security breaches such as, cloning and/or duplications under extreme adverse conditions. Further, a cloned card, used on any STB, can give an end user a complete access to all the multimedia services provided by the service provider.
Therefore, it is necessary to identify possibility of security breach in the information appliance device, and to add additional levels of security checks for the use of smartcards in the STB.